June 22, 2017: The 28-hour countdown for the launch of the PSLV C38 rocket carrying India’s Cartost-2 Series satellite and 30 other co-passenger payloads, has begun Thursday morning at 5.29 hours.
In the 40th flight of the launch vehicle PSLV, the satellites would be slung into a 505-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit on Friday, after its lift off at Nine-Twenty Nine hours from Sriharikotta.
Out of the 30 co-passenger nano-satellites, 29 belong to foreign customers from 14 countries. The lone domestic nano-satellite is from an educational institution in Kanyakumari district.
The Cartosat-2 Series is a remote sensing satellite, with a mission life of five years. It is similar to five of its peers that were launched earlier, and contain panchromatic and multi-sectoral cameras.
Their data are useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural planning, coastal land use regulation, road network monitoring and land and geographical information system applications.
More from our correspondent:
AIR correspondent reports, the PSLV C38/Cartosat-2 Series satellite mission is the ISRO’s second launch mission this month.
It closely follows the recent successful maiden test flight of the GSLV Mark-III launch vehicle.
Hectic activities are going on in the first launch pad of the national space port at Sriharikotta, as part of the PSLV countdown process.
The total weight of all the 31 satellites together during lift off is 955 kilogram. The 44.4 meter long rocket’s lift off mass is 320 tonne.
The Cartosat-2 Series satellite along with its other peers in space is capable of providing high resolution images, making India self-sufficient in mapping applications. (AIR NEWS)
